social media
Confusing trend: one-word tweets from Biden, Scholz & Co.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks at his mobile phone in the Bundestag (archive photo). photo
© Kay Nietfeld/dpa
Olaf Scholz tweeted briefly: “respect”. In doing so, he joins a trend among many large accounts on the network. The unintended trigger probably comes from the USA.
US President Joe Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, ministries and numerous well-known companies and institutions have caused a stir with strangely brief messages on Twitter. “rule of law,” wrote the Federal Ministry of Justice on Friday on the short message platform. “Respect,” tweeted Chancellor Scholz’s (SPD) account. Finance Minister Christian Lindner got in with “freiheit”, US President Biden opted for: “democracy” and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj for “freedom”.
The background was a trend in the social medium that had been spreading since Thursday: user accounts wrote a term that suited their role or was associated with them by themselves or others. The trigger was probably the US rail company Amtrak, which on Thursday – unclear whether intentional or not – had sold a tweet with only the word “trains” (trains).
The brief message, which was shared around 25,000 times by Friday afternoon, found numerous imitators: “universe,” wrote the US space organization Nasa. The human rights organization Amnesty International tweeted “human rights”, the US newspaper “Washington Post” chose “news”, the fast-food chain McDonalds alluded to its mascot “clown” and France’s embassy in the USA: “revolution”.
The action sparked mixed feelings among users. Many readers commented confused, others amused. Among the notifications from German official bodies, some users speculated whether the accounts, such as those of Scholz or Lindner, had been hacked. The satirical medium “Der Postillon” commented: “cringe” (embarrassing). The Amtrak company gave a moody assessment of what happened on Friday: “yesterday was weird. Anyway it’s still trains.” (“Yesterday was strange. Nevertheless, trains continue.”)